Right in this moment, I hate myself more than I've ever had.

Seeing Sierra cry, seeing her fight an internal battle with herself...it breaks every piece of me.

I want nothing more but to hold her in my arms, tell her everything's alright and that she's safe with me. I want nothing more but to take her pain away and give her the happiest life she could ever have.

I want nothing more but to love this woman for the rest of my life, take care of her, be there for her and protect her with all I have.

Minutes pass. Minutes neither of us speaks in. I'm still holding my hands up for her to see, for her to know that I will not go beyond her boundaries. I won't touch her, even if I want to pull her into the biggest hug there is.

"He was tall," Sierra sighs. Her hands are shaking. She looks down at them, not meeting my eyes. But that's alright. "He had a couple of tattoos on his arms, and he smelled of cigarettes and whiskey. He..." her shoulders shake as she starts to cry even more.

I want to speak, tell her it's okay and she doesn't have to continue. But she has to. She has to share her pain, speak it out into the open before it's eventually eating her alive.

"He had dark hair, always wore a suit when he came over," she says. Sierra isn't talking to me, she's laying information out to herself. "He was strong, intimidating. He had a firm grip when he touched my arm and dragged me down the hall. His hands were so big, they closed around my arm."

Sierra looks up at me, her eyes meeting mine. They're filled with so much pain, yet she looks numb. Like talking about all this is killing every single emotion she has. And they're red, so red and puffy, you'd think she'd done drugs for days.

"I was three years old." Sierra lifts her hands to mine, slowly pushing them down, showing me that it's okay, that I no longer have to hold them up. "Cody wasn't there when he came. And I always wondered why he only ever showed up when Cody went to a friend's house."

"I would be asleep, and then feel a hand grip onto me tightly. He would drag me out of my bed, drag me down the hall and force me into the bathroom with him."

Sierra takes my hand in hers, interlocking our fingers. She holds my hand, looking at them instead of looking at me. But I can't blame her.

"He would beat me, call me names of which most I don't remember. He would speak a whole different language, Russian, I think. He didn't touch me otherwise, at least not that I know of it. But he made me watch. Watch as he took a shower and...did things."

Her grip on my hand tightens. She lets out a strangled breath but she tries to steady it, tries to breathe normally.

"I was too young to understand what he did. Too young to really comprehend it as well. I know he never made me 'help' him. He used to say that a lot. 'When you're older, malyshka, then you'll be helping me', he said it every time. But by the time I turned four, he wasn't coming over anymore. I don't know where he went, if he had died or just went away, I wouldn't know."

"Do you know who he was?" I find myself asking. Maybe someone her mother has dated in the past. Or a family "friend". A neighbour, anyone I could potentially find.

She shakes her head. "I always just assumed he was a friend of Drew's," she tells me. "I don't remember my mother being with anyone but Drew. They've gotten married while she was still pregnant with me."

"Your mother," I say quietly, mostly to myself. I've met her a couple of times before she had passed away. Didn't pay too much attention, but she seemed like a lovely woman. Like someone who'd do anything to keep her children safe.

Sierra's eyebrows fall, actually, her entire expression falls. She didn't look happy before, and yet she still managed to look even more shocked, even more scared and sadder.

"What does my mother have to do with that guy?" she asks, slowly removing her hand from mine.

"Do you see any potential of that man being your biological father?"

Sierra shakes her head. "I don't know. And even if that was possible, I wouldn't want to know. It's better if I don't." I guess she's right. "Atlas?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I hug you?"

Like she would ever have to ask.

I open my arms for her. She jumps off her seat and fall into my arms, wrapping hers around me as she presses her head into my chest, crying. And I let her cry, even though hearing her sobs and feeling her shake against my body pains my heart.

Closing my arms around her, I lean my head down on top of hers. Maybe she will need a few more weeks, months, years, to understand it...but she's mine and I'm not ever going to let her go.

"You don't look like him, Atlas," she mumbles, sniffling. "He had brown eyes, yours are the deepest blue I've ever seen. He was...cold, and yeah, you are that most time of the day, but not with me. I don't think you've ever really been with me."

I don't think I have. From the second I met her, Sierra has invaded my thoughts. She was in every breath I took, in every beat of my heart—she still is. It only took us a while to meet again. A whole, torturous long while.

And although I didn't recognise her the day in my office, maybe a part of me still did.

"Ask me a question," I say. "Anything you've always wanted to know." If she had to dig back into her childhood, it's only fair she makes me do the same.

"How did you meet Cody?"

I chuckle. "Sweetheart, I meant a different question. We both know you're more interested in another part of my life than Cody."

She nods, I can feel it. I know she's been wondering one thing ever since she met me. The reason why I avoid questions, why I'm not the person I am to her, to everyone else as well.

"What happened to you, Atlas?" And there it is. As much of a torturous question as I've asked her. "What happened that made you turn off your humanity like Stefan from TVD?"

She pulls back from the hug but still stands between my legs. Her hands lie on my thighs, held in mine. She looks at me, green eyes meeting whatever she said mine were.

"I watched my father shoot himself in his head," I answer. Just like Sierra has never talked about her past, I have never spoken about what had happened that day either.

She gasps but doesn't comment.

"He was a good man. He worked three jobs to keep his family standing. He cared so very much about every single one of us, indebted himself to make sure we weren't starving."

Her hands squeeze mine, comfortably.

"Shortly before my fifteenth birthday, I came home early from school. No one was home yet, except for my dad. It was odd, he was never home that early. As I walked into the kitchen, he looked right into my eyes, his face tear-stained. He smiled at me, then said 'You have to do everything that's necessary to make sure your family never has to starve. You're a Storm, you have to learn how to rise like one, cold and untouchable' a second later, he held a gun to his head and shot himself."

She's crying again. Not for herself, for me. I bring my hands to her face, sliding my thumbs underneath her eyes to remove her tears.

"Why you?" she asks, her voice thin, teary.

"I'm the oldest of the five of us. Winter was only good a few months old. Not important. I ended up inheriting all money my father had saved up. It was meant for college, but I got a scholarship so I ended up spending the money on my own company. Anyway, from the second I heard and saw the shot, I knew I'd have to do anything in my power to give at least Winter a great life."

"So you stopped caring and turned cold?" Hit the nail right on the head.

I nod. "If I let other people tell me what to do, I wouldn't be where I am now. Emotions can stop so much, I didn't need that. I needed to be successful and help my family."

"Well, Sir Atlas Storm," she says, smiling at me, softly and with a hit of pride. "You made it. You'll never run out of money."

I raise my eyebrows at her. "Oh, I will. My wife loves spending all I have."

Sierra laughs, the only sweet sound that could calm my nerves. She wraps her arms around my neck, then her lips meet mine, kissing me so deeply I think she might have just put a band-aid over every wound.

"If my husband actually paid me for my job, I wouldn't have to spend his money," she says against my lips.

"What should I pay you for? You didn't even go to work all month. I had an important conference meeting, and you weren't even there to distract me."

Her jaw drops with a slight grin. It doesn't take long before I can feel her palm slap right against my chest. "I am not a distraction."

Oh but she is the biggest distraction I've ever come across. "Whatever you say, sweetheart." I turn her around, her back pressing against my front. I sneak my hands underneath her shirt and lay them on her stomach. Sierra leans her head back, resting it against my shoulder.

"Do you love me yet?" she asks.

I have since I was fourteen, I want to say but it sounds too psychotic. Maybe someday I'll tell her about it. Someday that isn't today. We've shared enough trauma for one day.

I need to think of an answer that satisfies her, and yet still sorta avoids the question. "I think, if I do, you should wait until I'm telling you without you having to ask."

Sierra isn't ready to hear me say it yet. If she still has to ask, she still refuses to see the obvious. That means, she would panic, even though she clearly waits for it to happen.

She groans quietly but doesn't argue. "I spent millions of your money for your birthday present."

I start to cough, chocking on my own saliva. That has never happened to me before. No one ever shocked me so much, I was fighting with my airways to let me breathe.

It's not even the fact that she is spending my money. I want her to spend my money. It's merely the fact that she didn't have to get me a present. I wasn't expecting her to do so.

Sierra laughs as she turns around in my arms and looks at me.

"Did you buy an island?" I ask, finding that to be the only plausible option. She shakes her head. "A house?" Another head-shake. "Did you buy a zoo or something?"

"No," she giggles. "Nursery furniture is expensive. Baby clothes, too. God, babies are expensive."

"But free to conceive." Her eyes narrow at me in a matter of a second. "So, my present is a present for the baby?"

Sierra groans in frustration. "The blip needs a name. You can't keep referring to her as 'the baby'."

"You're calling her 'the blip', that's not much better either."

"I like the name Ace."

"For a girl?"

She groans. Again. "I told you, I was out to have a boy."

"Well, you didn't get one," I tell her, stating the obvious.

"In that case..." she smirks at me mischievously. "You might just have to get me pregnant again. Until one lucky pregnancy, it's a boy."

I think my heart just stopped beating. She can't possibly mean that. I mean, Sierra doesn't even think we'd have a future together. She can't be wanting to tie us even more together by having another god knows how many children.

And still, I can't stop myself from saying, "I'll give you a million babies if that's what you want, sweetheart."